A butler, in livery, answered my knock and looked me up and down without expression. It was the first time in my life I had ever met a liveried butler. I gave him my name. He asked what it was with reference to. I said it was personal and private and I had been sent by Dr. Brawley. He said I could wait in the parlor, showed me in and went.
The walls were studded with Renoirs. It was the sort of house which could easily have been ugly and baroque, but whoever had decorated it had owned taste enough to stop well short of that. Impressive as it was, the house — at least as far as I could tell from this part of it — had been designed with one paramount purpose: comfort. The furniture was massive, upholstered, but not overstuffed; most of it was covered with leather. The high ceiling was supported by dark beams at least eighteen inches thick. The carpet was the most enormous Chimayo Indian rug I had ever seen.
The room was cool, fanned without drafts by unobtrusive central air conditioning. The far wall, to which I walked now, was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
By their books shall ye know them. John-Ben Baragray had a catholic collection on his bookshelves. Philosophy, science, literary scholarship, and one section very heavy on military history. There were three shelves of novels, but none of them could have been classified as light reading. All the books looked as if they had been read. None seemed to be rare or expensive editions; they were books that had been accumulated by a reader, not a collector.
There was a deep leather reading chair, well worn, and a chair-side table that supported two cork coasters and a collection of pill bottles. I bent down to look. There were nitroglycerine pills, stimulants, depressants and amyl nitrate capsules. I frowned. Brawley had called him a hypochondriac — but you didn’t prescribe nitro and amyl-nitrate for psychosomatic disorders. Those were remedies for severe heart disease. A violent murder, transportation and burial of the body — all these committed by a man with a weak heart? It didn’t—
“Mr. Crane? Simon Crane? Do I know you, sir?”
The voice was a deep round boom. I straightened up and turned.
He was an enormous old man. He towered over me. He wore shirt and trousers of what looked like death-wish black. His hair was a full gray mane; he had a sweeping mustache. His face was crosshatched with weathered creases, and his hand, which he offered, was powerful and horny.
“I’m John-Ben Baragray. You mentioned Fred Brawley’s name.”
“How are you?” I said by way of greeting.
He answered the question literally: he made a good-natured groan, which resonated off the rafters, and said confidentially, “Truth told, I’m a sick man. A very sick man. You were looking at the pharmacy over there — I’ve got a bum ticker of course. If I was a building the doctors would condemn me. Do you know how close I am right now to having a coronary? But to hell with it. Modern medicine — hogwash. Of all the false gods we worship, the most false is the idea that man progresses. An African witch doctor has as high a percentage of cures as the highest-priced physician in the world today.”
He lowered his head to examine me from beneath his heavy unruly eyebrows. “You’re not falling apart with sympathy at all. Hell, that’s the penalty for being an oversized man — you don’t get appreciation of your misery when you’re ill. Well, if you let me I’ll spend the whole day talking about my numerous ailments, and I suspect that’s not what you came here for. You’ve had a long drive in an open Jeep under a goddamn hot sun and therefore I deduce it must be something too important for the telephone. Can I get you a drink?”
He was already walking, with short paces for a long-legged man, to a bar beyond the front window. I said, “Just beer, if you’ve got it.”
“A man shouldn’t drink anything but beer on a day this hot,” he agreed. He removed two bottles of beer — some foreign brand I’d never heard of — from a small concealed refrigerator. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d opened the bottles with his teeth, but he used an ordinary five-cent church key, handed me a bottle without bothering about a glass, and lifted his bottle in toast. “I drink to you, sir. Your life expectancy is longer than mine.”
That was doubtful. I tasted the beer and it was excellent. John-Ben Baragray pointed to a chair. We sat, facing each other; I said, “I’ve got a crapshooter’s instincts and sometimes I play by them. I came here with something in mind but I’ve changed my mind.”
“You’re not a doctor, of course, even if Fred Brawley did send you.”
“He didn’t send me. He suggested your name when I put a question to him.”
“What question?”
I considered his wise, tough, worldly face. I said, “You’ve probably heard, Salvatore Aiello was murdered.”
“Yes.” He watched and listened expressionlessly, slightly skeptical but not aroused. I felt disconcerted.
I said, “I’m not a cop, but I’ve got an important stake in finding out who killed Aiello. The only lead I’ve got is a pink Cadillac that was seen leaving his house at about the time of the murder. Brawley told me you had a pink Cadillac.”
“I did,” he said, without emphasis. “Anything else?”
“What’s your connection with Aiello?”
The bushy brows lifted; nothing else moved. After a moment he said, “None whatever. Of course I know who he is — was. I won’t deny I’ve had a few dealings with an associate of his, but I’ve never had anything to do with Aiello.”
“Vincent Madonna?”
“If you like naming names,” he said. “Yes.”
“Politics?”
“Naturally,” he said. In the back of his tone there was the hint of a Texas drawl, but it wasn’t pronounced. He had a voice like a bassoon. He said, “Madonna and I are on different sides of the fence. It’s no secret. He wants to bring the gamblers into our state, legally, and I want to keep them out. I’ve met Madonna a few times, tried to negotiate the question, but he doesn’t believe in negotiating. That’s all right — I can be pretty stubborn myself. I don’t like those bastards but I respect them. Do you want to know anything about my pink Cadillac?”
“Sure.”
“I sold it a month ago.” He gave me a look that might have passed for a fleeting smile; he said, “I can prove it if necessary.”
“Who’d you sell it to?”
“The Cadillac agency. I swapped it for a new car.” His chuckle was a thunderous rumble. “Naturally the word went around that I traded it in because the ash trays had filled up. That’s the curse of wealth in this country. The fact was, the car was several years old and I don’t treat cars gently. It needed replacement. Well, never mind. The rich are always hated, you know, and I’ve learned there’s no way to prevent it. You can donate a lot of money to good causes but you’re accused of dodging taxes. You can drive around in a cheap used car and wear old clothes and act like one of the boys and they say you’re cheap or phony or trying to suck up to somebody or crazy or insecure. If you’ve got good manners you’re a snob and if you’ve got bad manners you’re nouveau riche and that makes you a slob. If you live according to your income you’re conspicuous and vulgar, and if you don’t you’re a tightwad. There’s only one answer to it and that’s to quit giving a good goddamn what anybody thinks and just do the hell what you feel like doing, because that’s the only thing money can do for you anyway — buy you freedom.”
He stopped suddenly and gave me a sharp glance. “Hell, you didn’t come here to listen to a sick old man bleat about the poverty of riches. Is there anything I can do for you besides tell you about pink Cadillacs? Another beer? A bite of lunch?”
“No. No, thanks.” I got up, feeling like an intruder. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I had a feeling before you walked in the room that I’d been given a bum steer.”